Gavin Newsom declared his candidacy for governor and war on Jerry Brown, who also wants the job. Newsom is San Francisco’s mayor; Brown, attorney general. Other candidates hedged or failed to declare their candidacies during the Democrats’ state convention in Sacramento.
State Senator Fran Pavley said to vote yes on Props 1A-F in an editorial in the Ventura County Star. They aren’t perfect, but the alternative is worse, she said.
Sue Broidy is the new director of Region 10 for Democrats in Ventura County. She has been successful at increasing Democratic voter turnout, supporters say. Thus began the last days of Elton Gallegly’s tenure as congressman.
The Thousand Oaks Police Department is now using Twitter. Now you can follow the low-speed car chases from Leisure Village to the botanical gardens in real time.
This website warned you last week: water prices are rising. It’s true. The Thousand Oaks City Council decided “in concept” to establish a tiered fee system. You will also have to water your lawn less often.
A retired sheriff’s deputy wants to alleviate the pain of suffering people by opening a cannabis shop. Westlake Village says no. It will not permit a medical marijuana dispensary to open in the city. It is against our zoning ordinances, say officials.
Who needs math and English teachers anyway? Even after dipping into a rainy day fund, the Conejo Valley Unified School District board will have to cut its budget by about $5 million. Anticipate larger classes and fewer teachers and counselors. The board hopes for federal stimulus dollars.
Despite tea parties, the Thousand Oaks City Council is also eager to get federal stimulus money. It wants about $40 million to undertake various projects, mostly related to water and the glamorous topic of sewage. These have to completed within 2 years.
Cows and humans have 80% of their genes in common, say scientists who unraveled the bovine genome. This explains why some people vote Republican.
Thumbing her nose at Thomas Jefferson, Assemblywoman Audra Strickland had sought to knock a big hole in the iron wall of separation between church and state with her religion in schools bill. Not so fast, said a California assembly panel. They stopped her legislation cold.
More Republican shenanigans last week as protesters pretended to be patriots and held tea parties at the urging of conservative commentators. Many blamed Obama for a slide toward socialism. Others claimed he was, of all things, a Muslim, and not an American citizen.
What about the children? asked a group of 22 school superintendents in a recent editorial. They implored Californians to vote yes on Props 1A, 1B, and 1C. If these do not pass, schools will suffer, they said.
It emerged this week that disgraced Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich is a graduate of Pepperdine Law School. How can a school that prides itself on its ethics produce such a person? Oh yes, its dean is Kenneth Starr.
Zoning rules in Thousand Oaks are funky, says Mayor Tom Glancy. He’s right. They are unfair and bad for the city, too.
A church wants to build a complex on open-space land between Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley. We aren’t sure that’s a good idea, says the Board of Supervisors. They halted all development for 45 days.
The unemployment rate for March was 9.6% in Ventura County. Some residents are resorting to self-medication to ease the pain.
More Ventura County residents are using heroin, say officials. Coming soon to a neighborhood near you: junkies breaking into houses.
And they won’t even be able to get a glass of water as they steal your television. Ventura County residents will soon face higher water bills due to a water shortage.
After years of Bush Administration resistance, the EPA decided, preliminarily, that climate change is real, carbon dioxide levels are increasing, and global warming is getting worse. Schwarzenegger applauded.
Blighted Santa Susana Field Laboratory might be transformed into the Santa Susana State Park if Assemblyman Cameron Smyth has his way. All that toxic waste would have to be removed first.
State Assemblyman Mike Duvall is seeking to ban speech he doesn’t agree with. This is why he introduced legislation to forbid antiwar T-shirts that contain the names of dead service members.
A lichen recently discovered on Santa Rosa Island was named after President Obama. Caloplaca obamae was discovered by an amateur botanist.
“At any rate I’ll never go there again!” said Alice, as she picked her way through the wood. “It’s the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!”
And so it was. Just when we thought the Republican Party could not embarrass itself any more than it already has, it did.
They were called tea parties.
Fancying themselves patriots, Republicans, mad as hell that they lost the presidential election after having squandered the last eight years, held tea parties throughout the nation this week.
Brian Dennert, brave blogger that he is, waded into one yesterday, armed with his intellect and a video camera. Here are the results:
On one hand, it is good to see that there are people who care enough about public policy to take to the streets in protest. These ladies are charming in their earnestness, in their friendliness to the interviewer, and in their willingness to speak their minds.
On the other hand, it is appalling to see such a display of uninformed right-wing paranoia. The common thread of all these tea party events was this feeling of persecution on the part of Republicans. They posed as the afflicted minority, asserting that they were deeply offended by all of this taxation.
One cannot help but point out that we can thank the Texan-in-chief, former president George W. Bush, for much of the deficit we currently have. He left office with a $482 billion deficit under his oversize belt buckle.
Speaking of Texans, no tea party can be complete without its Mad Hatter. This is where the new Texan-in-Chief, Governor Rick Perry, steps in. Did people really vote for this guy?
Apparently so. He’s continuing the Bush tradition of all-nonsense politics admirably.
The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, incidentally, is this:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
These lines are, along with the Second Amendment, conservatives’ favorites. The Tenth Amendment was used to justify segregation during the 1960s. Hitch your wagon to a star, Governor Perry.
Governor Rick Perry of Texas holds forth on the virtues of the Tenth Amendment.
There is a special statewide election being held in California on May 19. This is why the secretary of state sent out voter pamphlets and sample ballots. There are six propositions on the ballot, all pertaining to the budget.
April 15 is tax day. Pay up or else.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said she likes Thousand Oaks during a recent visit here. Locals suspected that she was merely being polite.
More than 700 employees of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory were hurt by conditions there. Senators Feinstein and Boxer want these employees to be paid money owed to them. They have introduced legislation to that effect: the Santa Susana Fair Compensation Act of 2009.
Congressman Gallegly wrote another insufferable editorial this Sunday. He sounds more and more like a tin-foil-hat type and less and less like a congressman. His point was to blame 9/11 for the Bush budget deficit and Pelosi and Reid for the current one.
A state government panel in Davis is examining whether to change the way California businesses pay property taxes. The Golden State has one of the lowest property tax rates in the country. It was suggested that businesses might have to pay more.
Adding more fuel to already blazing concerns about California’s climate, American Rivers released a report claiming that the Sacramento-San Joaquin river system risks “collapse.” We would all have much less water and Sacramento itself could flood. If the legislature cannot save the budget, how can it save itself?
Residents of Ventura County paid their property taxes again on April 10. Many found it hard to pay. Render unto Caesar.
Should Thousand Oaks residents pay $96,500 to a consultancy firm? The city council said yes. The firm will be charged with drumming up more business for The Lakes, a nice outdoor shopping center. One suggestion: build stores people can afford to shop in. A movie theater would be a good idea.
Chris Norman, former assistant city attorney for Ventura, has come to Thousand Oaks to work for the city in a similar position. He will work on land-use issues.
The Thousand Oaks assistant city manager has resigned and won’t say why.
Enough is enough. For years, pirates from various coastal cities and towns in Somalia have been making quick forays into the Gulf of Aden to raid merchant vessels. They kidnap the crews to demand ransoms, sell the cargo, and seize and sell the smaller vessels. They have often been successful, with spineless governments and helpless companies agreeing to hand over millions of dollars.
Somali Pirates on October 8, 2008. U.S. Navy photo.
It is a multinational problem, with the United States, the European Union, Iran, France, Russia, India, and other nations sending ships to patrol the vast swathe of ocean where the pirates operate.
The United Nations Security Council has authorized other nations to patrol the Gulf of Aden, which lies between Somalia and Yemen.
Pirates have seized a Saudi oil tanker and a Ukrainian ship loaded with Russian tanks bound for Kenya.
Piracy has even caused the Chinese to send two destroyers and a supply ship to the Gulf of Aden to help defend its vital supply line to Middle Eastern oil and African raw materials. Seven Chinese vessels had been attacked and one had been captured, its crew held hostage.
What has captured everyone’s attention recently has been the raid by four pirates on an American merchant ship, the Alabama, that had been transporting humanitarian aid. Its crew had managed to capture one hijacker, who they tried to exchange for their captain, who had been taken hostage. The Americans freed their captive, the hijackers reneged.
The American captain, Richard Phillips, is still being held. He made a daring attempt to escape, diving into the ocean, but was recaptured by the pirates. They want $2 million ransom.
American officials had been negotiating with Somali elders from the city of Gara’ad, but negotiations reportedly broke down after the elders refused an offer to release the pirates into the custody of the Puntland government in exchange for the captain’s release. Puntland is a semiautonomous region in northeastern Somalia.
There are currently about 250 hostages being held by Somali pirates. This piracy clearly must stop and the United States should take a leading role.
The response thusfar has been one of restraint: the United States and other nations have merely stepped up patrols, usually with mandates not to fire on Somali pirates unless attacked. This is frustrating.
Should the United States respond as it did during the Barbary Wars of the early 1800s, when it sought to stop North African piracy by raids on the Barbary states?
In a word, yes. It is time for more aggressive multinational military action.
In an article about the lessons from the Barbary Wars, New York Times columnist Jeffrey Gettleman writes that “any effort to wipe out Somali pirate dens like Xarardheere or Eyl immediately conjures up the ghost of “Black Hawk Down,” the episode in 1993 when clan militiamen in flip-flops killed 18 American soldiers. Until America can get over that, and until the world can put Somalia together as a nation, another solution suggests itself: just steer clear — way clear, like 500 miles plus — of Somalia’s seas.”
His proposed solution–getting out of the pirates’ way–is untenable. Billions of dollars in trade are funneled through the Gulf of Aden every year. This is why unarmed merchant ships are such a tempting target. And now Americans are paying the price.
The State Department’s response has been flaccid. The Obama administration seems flummoxed. We really must show more leadership than that.
I advocate aggressive, systematic targeting of pirate vessels operating in the Gulf of Aden. Airstrikes should be conducted against clearly identifiable pirate targets. Elite units should be sent to harass and destroy pirates and to free hostages, but no land should be taken and held.
This should be done by all nations that have a stake in the free flow of trade and aid around the Horn of Africa. It might be an unprecedented opportunity to cooperate militarily with Puntland, Russia, and China on a scourge that effects each of these countries.
The goal should be to make it unsafe for pirates to operate in these waters. The United States, alone, should not attempt nationbuilding in Somalia, however. The task is too great; the cost too high. We should not station troops there or set up bases.
We should make the Gulf of Aden a very poor place for pirates to do business.
Obviously our troops could not stay in the Gulf of Aden forever. That’s why the nations involved in this endeavor should set up a permanent force, and a permanent procedure, for securing the Gulf.
Each of these nations together should devise ways to ameliorate the poverty and disorder that is the root cause of fishermen turning to piracy. This should be initiated immediately with a multinational summit on the issue.
Furthermore, merchant vessels should be authorized to be armed when operating in the Gulf of Aden. Most are now just big, helpless floating targets.
These actions, taken together, would go a long way to reducing Somali piracy.
Why am I, a Democrat, advocating military intervention when I so strongly opposed the Iraq war? Because Iraq was a canard, a unnecessary war dreamed up by a foolish, deluded administration bent on blaming Saddam Hussein for the attacks of September 11.
Because there is a place for military action in the toolkit of ways to deal with global problems. Military power should be used sparingly and multilaterally, and only when a clear objective can be achieved with a minimal loss of life.
The Somali piracy situation, in contrast to Iraq in 2003, is a real danger. It is a problem that can be dealt with firmly, decisively, and with a relatively low level of force. Enough already.
You’ve got to love Barack Obama. Okay, I can hear some of you “drill baby drill” types objecting. But listen, we’ve gone from a president who could not pronounce the word nuclear to someone who produces slick fireside chats like this one, his latest:
See what I mean? He inspires confidence. And his forays into the web are turning President Obama into seemingly the most accessible president since Lincoln, who used to talk to virtually to everyone who showed up.
Obama’s weekly video addresses can be found at www.whitehouse.gov. You can download it as a podcast, too. I used to listen to Obama’s podcast when he was a state senator from Illinois. He published only a few, and ditched the podcast when his schedule evidently got to busy, but he has retained his familiar style: the particular way he has of making his listeners feel that is one of them, not an elite.
He’s got a blog, too, at whitehouse.gov/blog/. Sure, it’s nothing more than a less formal press release written by staffers, but it’s worth reading. And the photos are gorgeous. Those White House photographers know their stuff.
Then there was his online town hall meeting held on March 26.
I was one of the 90,000 people who submitted questions to the president. Here’s the way it worked: you logged onto whitehouse.gov and could submit questions in one of several predetermined categories, such as education, jobs, and healthcare. You could submit your own questions, and you could vote on other people’s questions. The president gamely vowed to answer the most popular questions based on the popular vote.
There seems to have been an organized campaign by pot smokers to ask the question why he doesn’t legalize marijuana. The president didn’t sidestep the issue, he commented on it right away, dismissing the idea of legalization. There were also dozens of silly questions about legalizing online gambling. And then there were those who simply used the event as a way to bloviate.
The idea of an online town meeting was smart. For the president, it provided a safe, scripted environment (he was in a room packed with people largely sympathetic to his administration) and the less safe, unscripted questions from people participating online.
But the best aspect of the meeting was just this participation. Visitors felt like they had a stake in the process: the could submit content, vote on others’ content, and maybe, just maybe, have the president read their question on the air. A brilliant strategy.
Soon all this online civic engagement will be old hat. Even our state senator, Tony Strickland, is dipping his toe in the water (awkwardly, unconvincingly, but nevertheless):
So where does this leave us? In a brave new world. Although posting videos, podcasts, and legislation online does provide some measure of transparency, the politician, be he Barack Obama or Tony Strickland, still controls the message.
But that’s why we have people like bloggers, or, even better, journalists. If only newspapers weren’t dying out.
During the recent presidential campaign, I was pleasantly surprised by that state’s firm support of then-candidate Barack Obama. I was delighted when, unexpectedly, the Iowa Supreme Court decided on Friday that a state law restricting marriage to one man and one woman was unconstitutional.
It has been a dreary past few months. Aside from the overwhelmingly good news of Barack Obama’s presidential victory and his inspiring inauguration—a day I will remember as long as I’m alive—we’ve had a steady stream of bad news about the economy, terrible unemployment, teacher layoffs, and two wars that never seem to end. Not to mention the miserable mess that is Proposition 8.
But then something happened in Des Moines. A panel of judges upheld the sanctity of equal protection of the laws. Starting April 24, gay couples in Iowa can get married. This decision will change everything.
“When it was only California and Massachusetts, it could be perceived as extremism on the coasts and not related to core American values,” said John Logan of Brown University in a recent Associated Press article by Amy Lorentzen that appeared in Saturday’s Ventura County Star.
“But as it extends to states like Iowa, and as attitudes toward gay marriage have evidently changed, then people will look at it as an example of broad acceptance.”
Indeed. Attitudes have already changed. Blame it on Iowa, or blame it on Project Runway or Will and Grace, but young people these days do not have the hangups Archie Bunker once did. When they start replacing baby boomers as legislators, gay marriage will be legal even in conservative strongholds like the South.
So, I admire Iowans. They were among the first to recognize as lawful interracial marriages. Iowa led the nation in desegregation and women’s rights. It presaged Barack Obama’s presidential victory with its endorsement of him as the strongest Democratic presidential contender. Now it is a leader in recognizing the constitutional rights of gays.
As Iowa goes, so goes the nation.
Not to worry, conservatives. There will always be a place for homophobes in the Republican party. But the Republican party risks fading further into irrelevance if it sticks with its hysterically anti-gay platform. No political party can afford that.
They have common ground after all. Congresspersons Lois Capps and Elton Gallegly each received an award by the Humane Society for writing legislation that protects animals. Protection of human life was obvious excepted, as Gallegly has been a strong supporter of continuing the Iraq war.
The Do It Center was victorious in its campaign to squelch legitimate competition. On Wednesday, supporters of the failed Measure B successfully lobbied the Thousand Oaks City Council to forbid Home Depot from building a store in the city. Free enterprise be damned.
During his state senate campaign last year, Tony Strickland weakly claimed to be an alternative energy executive, although he admits in papers filed last month that his income from his putative company, Green Wave Energy Solutions, was between $0 and $499 last year. Could it be that Green Wave was just an expedient way to ride the clean energy wave without doing anything substantive?
Justice takes a holiday. The man who killed a jogger in Thousand Oaks last summer was sentenced to only six years in prison and financial restitution. Six years? That’s four less than the maximum, which itself is insufficient.
Plastic bags are bad for the environment, so the city of Moorpark wants to ban them. It will not because it fears being sued. The cost, too, is high. Then there’s the plastics industry. The environment usually loses out to industry.
California beware: climate change is real in the state and it is worse than expected. Higher temperatures, loss of agriculture revenue, greater electricity use, and worse, says the state’s Climate Action Team. Let’s hope Republicans take the team’s report to heart.
Governor Schwarzenegger appointed an independent auditor to oversee the $50 billion California will likely receive from President Obama’s stimulus package. Well done, both of you.
A man in New York walks into a building with two guns and a lot of ammunition. He kills 13 people there before killing himself. Sound familiar? It should. It’s the fifth such massacre this month. And yet the NRA opposes restrictions on gun ownership. Enough already.
Republican religious extremists were further marginalized this week by an Iowa Supreme Court decision that struck down as unconstitutional a law banning gay marriage. As Iowa goes, so goes the nation.
